…but some of my colleagues have:
Interesting stat from Carlo Ghezzi (via Steve’s blog): “The attendees at the first [ICSE] conference were 80% industry and only 20% academics. This has steadily changed: the conference is now 90% academics.”
The European Commission is thinking about extending consumer protection laws to cover bugs in software. Unsurprisingly, the Business Software Alliance is opposed 
In the wake of Toronto’s announcement that it’s opening up its data comes a similar advance in Vancouver. Those of you looking for research and business opportunities as well as a chance to make the places you live more livable, dive in!
And if you’re going to be a graduate or senior undergraduate student in Computer Science at the University of Toronto this fall, and would like to get course credit for doing something wonderful with all this data, please give me a shout.
MIT Press has kindly given me permission to put my first book, Practical Parallel Programming, up on the web. Many of the specifics are out of date, but I think (at least, I hope) much of the discussion is still useful.
One problem, though: nobody has the electronic source for the book’s hundred or more diagrams. I spent a couple of weeks sketching them with a pencil and straight edge in the VU library in the summer of 1994; a graphic artist in Boston then re-drew them using a Mac, but those files are long gone. I could chop a copy of the book and scan what I need as PNGs, but it got me wondering about OCR software for vector images. If anyone can recommend something, I’d welcome a pointer.
As well as the Software Carpentry course we’re running in Toronto July 13-31 this year, the Physics department is organizing a one-week Python Boot Camp July 13-17 for $375 (Canadian). Who knew we were so fashionable?
There was a box waiting for me in the mailroom today. “Oh,” I thought, “That was quick—Amazon usually takes at least a week.” But it wasn’t Amazon—no, it was my first five copies of Practical Programming, each in its own individual bubblewrap sleeve. W00t! And woo hoo! And don’t you dare say “errata” or “second edition”, at least not yet—I have a moment I’d like to savor.
Thanks again to Jennifer, Paul, and Jason (co-authors) and to Dan Steinberg at Pragmatic—yay!
A couple of people have asked whether Practical Programming is suitable for high school students. The answer is yes, particularly if they’re interested in science as well as programming. And of course, the Wing 101 IDE we recommend is free.
Another book in the “Beautiful” series, this one co-edited by my former colleague Adam Goucher and Mozilla’s Tim Riley, is nearing completion. It’ll be listed on Amazon tomorrow, and ship in October. Congrats!
Guelph’s 9th DemoCamp is happening on Wednesday, May 13; Missisauga’s first is on June 25. Tickets for Toronto’s 20th, on May 25, have once again sold out before most people knew it was happening—schedule is now online.
Over on the Software Carpentry blog, I’ve posted some links for our summer interns that might be of general interest, mostly to do with Science 2.0, reproducible research, and the like.
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